In this episode, we sit with Philippe Le Billon and Erik Post and discuss a wide array of topics all connected by a thread of seeing ‘sustainable development’ as yet another iteration in a long history of capitalist development. 

By examining violence and systemic injustices, as well as counter-hegemonic resistances, we situate the projects and paradigms advertised as ‘sustainable’ in a long history of colonial extraction and exploitation.

Of course, as with most things, there are nuances that cannot be ignored; that is, how does sovereignty and independence fit into this picture? How do we make sense of violence that may appear to some as happening in a vacuum, but are fundamentally intertwined with global empire? How do we reconcile national development in the Global South with the impacts of development on nature? 

These are some big questions, to which critical insight is offered by our guests Philippe and Erik today.

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Philippe Le Billon is a Professor at the University of British Columbia, jointly appointed in the Department of Geography and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs.

His research interests bring together political geography, political ecology, and war studies. He has focused most of his work on the links between natural resources and armed conflicts, but has also examined the political economy of war and reconstruction, the resource curse, corruption, as well as natural disasters and political crises.

His work spans multiple geographies, from Latin America to South East Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa and it tackles various ‘resources’ wrought from the Earth: from food to fossil fuels to metals and minerals that are notoriously associated with the violence accompanying their extraction, such as Cobalt in the Congo.

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Erik Post is currently in Mexico conducting fieldwork for his PhD Dissertation, which he is working with Philippe on completing. Broadly, his research explores geopolitics, violence, and colonialism in Latin America and the decolonial futures proposed by Indigenous struggles for racial, environmental, and climate justice. 

He examines how these conflicts are influenced by, and themselves influence power structures, state and corporate discourses and practices as well as the mobilization of values, norms, and principles in the politics of sustainable development and alternative development rationalities.

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Important Resource shared by Erik Post and mentioned in this episode re: resisting extractivism in Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico: 

https://poderlatam.org/sierra-de-apuestas/

It is a website where people can consult and download the research report “La Sierra en juego. El costo de la extracción en la Sierra Norte de Puebla” which he wrote with PODER. You can also explore the accompanying online platform “Sierra de Apuestas" with an interactive map and network analysis of corporate ownership.

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Reading:

The Green Transition in Context—Cobalt Responsible Sourcing for Battery Manufacturing

Proyectos de muerte and proyectos de vida: Indigenous counter-hegemonic praxis to sustainable development in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico